Reaching The Global Church Through Local Publishing
“We can barely find good, biblical, Arabic resources,” said a TMAI professor regarding his ministry in the Middle East. “This is the problem: We don’t have enough good resources. We don’t have books that can show you the truth as it is.”
But change is happening—a book at a time.
Just last month, the Arabic translation of Biblical Doctrine landed and is now heading to take its place in a growing library of sound Arabic resources. “We are happy to have another book on our shelf to use and give to our students,” the professor said. And by God’s grace, additional projects are underway.
This is the kind of change that’s coming about through one of TMAI’s newest initiatives—the GPD.
Introducing the GPD
While most of us can get a box of Christian books delivered to our door in a day or two, most of the world’s Christians have next to no sound resources in their native tongue.
In response to this, many of our schools on the field have launched their own indigenous publishing ministries—and they’ve found fruitful results. “The Czech Bible Institute,” for example, “started a publishing house that’s now the largest Christian publishing house in the country,” said one TMAI executive. And through these efforts, more and more Christians around the world are gaining access to books that were never available before.
“As we’ve gotten deeper into this work…we’ve seen that the need for this is great but also the opportunity is just massive.”
But publishing takes time. Lots of it.
When our schools began to face the mounting complexities that came with their publishing ministries, our headquarters looked for a way to get involved.
In 2020, we established the Global Publications Department (GPD) to relieve our schools of their burdens and still make sure they get great books. Led by Rick Kress, the GPD now streamlines the publication and distribution of indigenous biblical resources for all our schools around the world.
Strategic Field Support
When it comes to books and resources, the GPD supports the field in two ways:
Translation Projects:
For translation projects, the GPD bears the responsibility of interfacing with US publishers to manage license acquisitions and foreign translation rights. This ensures that our teams on the field can spend more time training their students.
Indigenous Resources:
For indigenous resources, the GPD works to develop and partner with in-country publishing houses that can carry this ministry forward into the next generation. This strategy is critical as more and more nationals start to write their own books.
Rick summarizes the two-step strategy to strengthen churches:
“The benefit of translating foundational works—like Bible expositions, Bible study notes, systematic theologies, and other resources—is that those kinds of books help train people to handle the Scriptures properly. Then, once indigenous authors are trained in that way, they are more equipped to go and write the kinds of books that apply Scripture to their own cultural context. So really the goal is to equip and enable indigenous authors.”
A former missionary adds,
“In the same way that we believe ‘A missionary is good but a national is better,’ we could say that ‘A translation is good, but a book written by a national is better.’ When you can write from an understanding of what your audience is living on a day-to-day basis, and when your readers understand that you get exactly where they’re coming from, then that resource is going to be so much more effective.”
This ministry has proven fruitful in country after country. “As we’ve gotten deeper into this work,” said one TMAI executive, “we’ve seen that the need for this is great but also the opportunity is just massive.” These first few years have already yielded a harvest of resources—and by God’s grace there’s more on the way. See below for a sample of what’s being done.
130 Books & Translations in Progress
Some languages include:
Italian
Burmese
Armenian
Russian
Arabic
Finnish
Japanese
Zulu
Ukrainian
Bahasa/Indonesian
German
Chinese
English for India/Philippines
Major Upcoming Projects
Zulu and Hebrew translations of the MacArthur Study Bible
Armenian translation of Essential Christian Doctrine
Russian and Albanian translations of Biblical Doctrine
Notable Projects Completed In 2021–22
Burmese translation of MacArthur Bible Handbook
Czech translation of Warren Wiersbe’s commentary
Armenian translation of Growing Your Faith by Jerry Bridges
Indonesian translation of Twelve Ordinary Men by John MacArthur
Polish and Arabic translations of Biblical Doctrine